#MeToo Is Now #MeBooHoo:

If You’re Taking the Accusations Against Brett Kavanaugh Seriously, You’ve Lost Your Moral Compass and Given in to Mass Hysteria

by Alexander Zubatov

There’s a saying among lawyers that easy cases make for bad law. This is because a clear, straightforward case often results in courts painting in broad strokes that result in sweeping principles that then wind up biting off much more than they were ever intended to chew. Harvey Weinstein, the opening salvo in the #MeToo movement, was an easy case. This guy looked and acted the part of an entitled sleaze, had scores of women all saying more or less the same thing about him, viz., that he wielded his substantial industry power as the head of an elite film production company to manipulate, cajole, bully and scare women into engaging in sexual conduct of one form or another with him, and had actual rape allegations being directed at him. The #MeToo movement that began as a result of that easy case then proceeded to turn into mass hysteria indiscriminately sweeping in both some guys that probably deserved it and some others that were more a testament to inappropriate conduct by the woman and media organizations involved than by the accused man, the prime example in that category being the nasty, brittle woman who anonymously smeared the actor Aziz Ansari in babe.net (which had the bad judgment and bad taste to print her sexually explicit screed) about what was no more than a bad date. But with the case of Brett Kavanaugh, the movement has officially jumped the shark: entirely lost in what has unfortunately been allowed to become a he-said/she-said between the credible allegations of the accuser and Kavanaugh’s own impassioned and credible defense is the fact that these allegations should never have been taken seriously or entertained. When you step back from the hysteria and think about them dispassionately, that becomes easy to see. Much of America seems to have lost its common sense and its moral compass.

Let me, first, make some things clear. From what I’ve seen, I don’t particularly like or respect Brett Kavanaugh and don’t necessarily think he’s the best choice for the U.S. Supreme Court. From my own time at Yale, he seems like exactly the kind of oft-drunken, rich, entitled, not particularly intellectual fratboy I would’ve held in low regard. Moreover, despite his undeniable accomplishments, he honestly doesn’t seem like the brightest bulb in the drawer. In answering repeated Democrat questions about why he wouldn’t support a full FBI investigation that they haven’t had a chance to conduct, a question he inexplicably appeared entirely unprepared for, all he could repeatedly say is that, well, the FBI would just interview witnesses, not reach conclusions, and he and his accuser were both already there before the committee, with other witnesses all having submitted statements supporting his account, so there was no need for an investigation. That’s a dumb response. If an investigation were conducted, the FBI would endeavor to examine and supply evidence and question witnesses rather than allowing them to rest on the untested allegations in their various sworn statements. While I have my doubts that such an investigation could uncover anything of significance about this alleged incident from back in 1982, I could be wrong. An investigation could turn up something. And, more importantly, Kavanaugh had a much better response available to him that was already there in pieces of his testimony but that he, an accomplished jurist, couldn’t seem to frame into a credible, coherent argument that would go something like this:

While I would cooperate in whatever course of action the committee thought appropriate, the reason I do not support and would not call for an FBI investigation into this at this stage is because, contrary to the assertions being made here that this committee didn’t have an opportunity to investigate this, you had a full opportunity to investigate it. When the ranking member (Sen. Feinstein) was first apprised of these allegations by Dr. Ford, there was plenty of time to conduct a full investigation and to do so privately and discreetly, which would have respected both Dr. Ford’s wishes for privacy for herself and her family and my reputation and my family. Instead, the ranking member waited until the eve of a vote on my confirmation, when nothing else disqualifying on me had been uncovered, and then sprang those allegations in an attempt to derail my confirmation. So the only reason a full investigation has not been conducted is that Sen. Feinstein made a choice to forego that opportunity. I should not be the one who suffers on account of that choice. And, speaking of suffering, the other big reason I would not support an investigation is that, in just the 10 days occasioned by the delay already caused by the manner in which these allegations were aired, my family and I have already been subjected to a wave of scurrilous and repulsive allegations by irresponsible and bottom-feeding media organizations and unscrupulous attorneys seeking to gin up controversy for their own purposes. As you might understand, I want this process over with, one way or the other. I have no wish to subject myself and my family to more delay and more of an opportunity for slander of this sort.

Simple and powerful. I understand he was under pressure and couldn’t necessarily think in a clear-minded fashion, but the entire job of courtroom lawyers is to perform when they’re most under pressure. Hopefully if he gets confirmed for the Supreme Court, he’ll be much better on the bench than he was on the witness stand.

But whether or not I like or respect Judge Kavanaugh is besides the point. The point — I have said it before, and I have said it again, and I will now say it a third time — is that the allegations against him, even if true, weren’t relevant to anything and should never have been taken seriously, with Republicans making a HUGE mistake by allowing the hearing to go forward. Take note of the following incontrovertible facts:

• At the time of the only remotely credible allegations at issue (Dr. Ford’s and those of Ms. Ramirez), Kavanaugh was a teenager, in either his last year of high school or first year in college. Being a teenager is known to impair one’s judgment.
• He is alleged to have been drinking or drunk at the time of both of the allegations in question. Drinking alcohol is known to impair one’s judgment.
• Put those last two points together: teenagers, whose judgment is already inherently impaired, are known to drink alcohol to excess, thereby further impairing their judgment, with the result that they do many incredibly stupid and dangerous things to themselves and others.
• People change a lot over time. Most adults grow up, sober up and don’t repeat the stupid mistakes they made when they were dumb, drunk kids.
• Judge Kavanaugh, as a responsible adult and in decades of practicing law, is not alleged to have done anything similar to what he may have done back in high school or early college. In fact, legions of character witnesses on his behalf have said that his treatment of women as an adult has always been respectful and even progressive. His record on this issue as an adult seems, from what we have heard so far, completely unblemished.
• Despite having been in a position of power for a few decades now, he is not alleged to have used any position of power he had to get women to perform sexual favors or anything of that sort.

The inescapable conclusion from these facts is that, regardless of whatever he did or didn’t do as a teenager, Judge Kavanaugh is simply no longer (or never was) like that. That right there blows up the whole basic pretext for airing these stale allegations at this point in time. If the process of confirming a judge for the Supreme Court is supposed to be about qualifications and character, then allegations about him as a teenager that don’t bear on his present-day qualifications or character are simply irrelevant.

So why are we taking those allegations seriously? For Congressional Democrats, this is, of course, a desperate, purely partisan gambit to keep another conservative off the high court, since Kavanaugh’s joining the Supreme Court would almost surely skew its tenuous balance rightward for years to come.

But this is also about something else. It’s about an absurd and toxic notion that for every victim, there must be a public reckoning, and so the overwrought subjective experiences of the most fragile and psychologically unwell women in our midst deserve to be heard by the general public (rather than by just their girlfriends or therapists) so that the public can enact its ritual exorcism and serve as the weak woman’s indignant, vengeance-exacting redeemer. This is how #MeToo jumped the shark and became #MeBooHoo. It no longer matters how long ago something happened, whether the statute of limitations would apply, whether any evidence or corroboration for the allegations in question exists, whether what is described was a rape, some groping, a bad date or perhaps even (the next step?) hurtful words, whether the guy involved had any power, whether he was drunk or sober, whether he was an adult or a teen or (next?) younger still, or whether the woman involved recalls key details of what, where and when. None of these distinctions matter any longer because the goal is not to assess the allegations and fairly judge the man’s guilt or innocence. The goal, rather, is to give the aggrieved woman — and if she feels aggrieved, who would deny that she feels aggrieved? — a chance to cry and, in response, to make a ritual show of sympathy and enact a ritual exorcism by casting out the sinner, i.e., getting him to resign, getting him fired or otherwise banishing from our midst.

Let’s face the facts: If Dr. Ford felt the need to air these stale grievances against someone who may have been Judge Kavanaugh 36 years after the fact to prevent him from getting on the Supreme Court, she, sincere though she seems, is someone who, in 36 years, hasn’t gotten over what was, at worst, some unwelcome forcible groping from a drunk teen. That makes her a particularly brittle and vengeful person. I don’t want to hear about PTSD and the like. Most people, women or men, would’ve long ago moved on, and if they were having an issue moving on, they would’ve pursued any of the innumerable options available for trauma, whether conventional therapy or EFT or EMDR or whatever. But our current political climate is encouraging these women to linger and to come out of the woodwork years later and get the rest of us to feel their pain. This is insane. It is not our job to have a public meltdown every time a woman has not acquired the tools to heal old scars and unresolved feelings. We cannot have a culture that substitutes feelings for facts and caters to and indulges the most brittle among us. If #MeToo had any legitimate ax to grind, #MeBooHoo certainly doesn’t. There comes a point — and we are now well past that point — when the only solution is to say the same harsh but true two words we’d say to a disconsolate crying child who just won’t stop: grow up!

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Alexander Zubatov is a practicing attorney specializing in general commercial litigation. He is also a practicing writer specializing in general non-commercial poetry, fiction, drama, essays and polemics. In the words of one of his intellectual heroes, José Ortega y Gasset, biography is “a system in which the contradictions of a human life are unified.”

Some of his articles have appeared in The Federalist, Times Higher Education, Quillette, The Imaginative Conservative, Chronicles, The Independent Journal Review, Acculturated, PopMatters, The Hedgehog Review, Mercatornet, The Montreal Review, Republic Standard, The Fortnightly Review, New English Review, Culture Wars and nthposition.

He makes occasional, unscheduled appearances on Twitter (https://twitter.com/Zoobahtov).